Frankie (Through Time 4)

“Your arrival has been quite fortuitous. I have not been certain until now that my little invention, my secret weapon, if you will, would work just in the manner I needed.”

She pulled herself out of the world of hurt, just a moment, a fraction of a moment and screeched at him, “Go to hell and hide there Pestale, for you have just signed the Death Warrant we should have had on you from the start!”

He sneered, said nothing and flicked his wrist. All at once, Frankie realized as she was thrown bodily into his Unseelie shift, that they were on the move.

“I hate the way you Unseelie shift…without style or finesse,” she taunted and then told herself, she had to get a grip or she was going to pass out from whatever it was that was happening inside her body. Still wrapped tightly in the bronze netting, she landed hard on a cold stone floor.

Maneuvering into a sitting position so she could see her surroundings, she realized she was in a dungeon cell. It was very small, and then she realized one more thing.

Stone? No, not stone. She was propped up and sitting on iron and her back leaned into iron, the ceiling was lined with iron and the door—iron. No windows, only a dark dank, iron cell.

She was immune to the stuff, but her da and Graely were not, and would not be able to find her while she was imprisoned with the stuff. They would not be able to sense her while she was surrounded by the offending ore. Even she, like earlier when she didn’t see the bomb encased with iron, could be fooled. She had seen the iron box and looked past it. Would Jazz think to look past iron? Would she?

Outside her cell, she heard him laugh before she heard him shift away.

She looked around herself again, as though to assure herself it was true. Aye then, she was alone and in an iron clad chamber—even the bed, iron and no mattress. Just as well, she had no intention of taking a nap while she was there.

She returned to her inner mind to escape the constant pain.

What was Pestale planning? He hadn’t known she would fall through the portal. He hadn’t known—so what, no; who had he prepared this chamber for?

She started to reach her hands toward her feet where the netting was secured, to keep her from shifting below.

She had to ignore the agony each movement shot through her. She had to find the strength to stretch the netting around her feet and break through.

She may have gotten herself into this mess, but Pestale didn’t realize she was going to damn well get herself out.

In spite of her predicament, in spite of her tearing pain, Frankie, being Frankie, smiled as she thought of sticking her Death Sword through the Dark Prince, Pestale.

A nagging worry flitted through her mind again. Who had the netting been prepared for? He had said he was testing it, but for whom? What was Pestale planning?

Chapter Seventeen

GRAELY STEPPED OUT of his shift into Pestale’s castle in the realm of Conglam and looked down the long wide chamber. It was large and sparsely furnished because Pestale had designed it to mirror the War Room he had enjoyed in the Dark Realm.

As far back as he could remember, Pestale always maintained a war room.

Graely collected his thoughts as he pushed his black hair away from his eyes, and stomped across to the long oak table which was covered with scattered maps of Conglam. Nothing unusual about that, but it was the map of Dublin, with a red circle around Trinity that caught and held his eye.

So, as he feared, even against all his hopes, he found that it was true. Pestale had been behind the attack on the humans. How could he have hoped otherwise?

He didn’t know why his link with Frankie wasn’t working, but he was damned certain he would find her. He didn’t have much time because the wards would send him back to the Human Realm and he never knew when that would happen.

He closed his eyes and when he opened them, a low throttle growl burned in his throat. His relationship to his remaining two brothers was forever a pull he had to fight. He had not been able to hate them, for he had been a part of their lives, had been for eons, when there was little else.

However, if Pestale had harmed his Frankie, he shook his head involuntarily because he couldn’t think about that. It made him weak-kneed.

Graely stared at the nearly empty stone walls of the chamber. Few paintings hung, few weapons were on display. No doubt, Crystal did not allow them any. He knew, however, that Pestale had a Death Sword, had managed to spirit it into Conglam. He had never remarked upon it. Pestale was his brother.

So then, his Unseelie monsters were no longer available to him, and thus, having no army, he created another—out of the Blue Demons.

But Graely couldn’t deal with all of that now. He had to find Frankie. Pestale would kill her. He hated her for what she had done six years ago. He had to find her.

Bloody hell, why couldn’t he pick up her scent, or reach her with his mind link?

He sniffed the air and this told him that even Pestale had not been in this particular chamber for some hours.

If Pestale had already captured her when she came hurtling out of the portal, she hadn’t been in this part of the rambling three story castle.